Tanner, According to Those Who Knew Him Best

A UFC Champion

Perhaps Tanner’s greatest win was his upset of David Terrell to win the UFC middleweight title. In fact, Tanner beat the odds by even making it to the fight. In the months before the February 2005 bout, he was struggling with alcoholism again.

Jason Leigh: He was down here (in Texas) for Thanksgiving. He’d gotten into a little funk. I was under the impression he was back in Oregon because he was only supposed to be down here for a week. Well, that week turned into three weeks. When Evan played, he played hard. I get a call at three in the morning telling me he’s lost in the woods. I told him to look around at something and tell me what you see so I could find him. “I see the public library,” he said. I said, “Man, you could throw a football from the bar where you’re at to the library.” He said he’d been walking around lost for three hours. It was really cold and windy and it was freezing, so I told him to go camp up by the library and I’d be there in a minute. I pulled into the library and I don’t see anybody and I honk my horn. I see this guy crawling out of the trashcan. It was about the time when he was growing his hair out and it was blowing everywhere. He climbed into the car.

A couple of days later he told me, “Man, I can’t do it. I’m not in shape. It will take me a while just to get back in the swing of things.” He was so far out of shape that he couldn’t even hold food down. He went back on his motorcycle to Oregon in the dead of winter, stopping along the way in hotels to do plyometrics to get back in shape. He got back and really busted his ass and got in really good shape in a short amount of time and went out there and shocked the world. From that to being a world champion in a month and a half.

Roaming the World and Writing About It

Tanner’s cult following reached another level after he had begun blogging about his adventures and struggles. Not everyone liked him or his stories, though.

Jason Leigh: He got a lot of people that made fun of him. He got a lot of people that related to him, a lot of people that were intrigued by him and would just wait for the next blog or the next episode of the Evan Tanner story. He was never a boring person. He would call me and tell me about people that would write him. They would write books back and forth to each other just on philosophy, or if they had problems, they’d ask him what he thought.

He had a passion for life and he cared about people. There were people that would call him and say they were building a playground for kids who didn’t have one. Evan flew himself out there and got to work to start building it. It didn’t have to do with Evan Tanner the celebrity. If somebody needed something, he was the guy you could call to get it done and he wouldn’t expect anything in return other than just drinking a beer and bull--------.

Kit Cope: I remember he had this old, old International Scout or something like that. But it was tore up and beat up, and it looked like it was being held together by some duct tape and bailing wire. He was basically cruising that thing up and down the entire western United States just figuring out where he was going to settle down at.

When he came to Vegas, he needed a place to train so he gave me a holler and I wound up training for a little bit. This was right before, I believe, the second Rich Franklin fight, and he was sleeping on the floor of Dennis Davis’ house or apartment. But wherever he rolled around, he had all his stuff with him. Everything he owned was in his little International Scout, and he just rolled through life. It was awesome.

Guy Mezger, who knew Tanner during their Pancrase days in the 90s: I remember in Japan when he’d get there, he’d go for these freaking long-ass walks. We’d be in, like, Shinya Yokohama outside the city itself, outside the immediate part of Shinya Yokohama, and nothing’s in English. And this dude would be walking for hours just because he wanted to check it out. I was always like, “Dude you’re crazy! You’ll get lost!”

But he was always kinda strange like that. Not strange in a negative way, but strange in that he had a real sense of adventure. It doesn’t surprise me that he was out there riding around in the freaking desert because he just wasn’t scared of anything. He’s the type of guy who would backpack through the Middle East. He always struck me as a straightforward guy, sometimes a little too straightforward. I’d read some of his blogs and I’d be like, “Dude, that’s a little more information than we need!”

It’s just a real shame because he was a good guy. I’ll miss him. There are many more people I’d rather see get caught in the middle of the desert than him.